Wednesday, January 5, 2011

La Historia de la Historia de la Musica Rock

OK, so the deal with this, that Pussy Galore had so much fun with, and I still do, is that between 1981 and 1983, two Spaniards by the name of Juan Manuel Prado and Jordi Sierra i Fabra began writing and publishing a Spanish language rock and roll magazine with a biographical/discographical slant.

In addition to other rock and roll books, including biographies of The Who, Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman (!), Sierra i Fabra had some ten years earlier also written a reference work called La Historia de la Musica Pop, so we can assume a name for the new project came fairly easily for them.

Each magazine was made up of 20 ad-free glossy pages, and featured text by Sierra i Fabra, full-color photos, and an illustrated discography by someopne named Alex Mosley. The magazines were published weekly by Orbis, a British printing house who kept an office in Barcelona. Once the series was complete in its 100 issues, it was reissued in 6 hardbound volumes of about 200 pages each, and nothing of its like on rock 'n' roll had ever been seen in the Spanish language before.

Of course, Lillian Roxon's English language Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock had outlived its original editor and gone into its second or third edition by this time, so Prado's large encyclopedia might have remained of limited interest to an Anglo like myself . . .

Had it not been for the records. See, each of the magazines had been issued in conjunction with an LP, usually a Greatest Hits compilation* manufactured by Polydor Italy, and while the books and the magazines de la Historia Rock never really made it stateside, the albums most assuredly did.

Anyone who spent any time at all in the cutout bins and in the import sections of record stores in the 80's is sure to have come across these records, and, really, they're not all that uncommon even now.

'Course, none of this really shares the joke, none of it really gets at the ironical reason Pussy Galore named their album what they did. In my telling thus far it all seems admirable. . . .

And it is. But dig the 100-entry series discography, and see if you don't crack a smile.

1.

The Rolling Stones

2.

Jimi Hendrix

3.

Jerry Lee Lewis

4.

David Bowie

5.

John Mayall

6.

The Beatles

7.

Genesis

8.

The Dave Clark Five

9.

The Small Faces

10.

Eric Clapton

11.

Joe Cocker

12.

Rod Stewart

13.

T Rex

14.

The Animals

15.

Procol Harum

16.

Manfred Mann

17.

Taste

18.

The Allman Brothers Band

19.

Bill Haley and The Comets

20.

Chuck Berry

21.

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity

22.

The Pretty Things

23.

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

24.

Fats Domino

25.

The Nice

26.

Elvis Presley

27.

Lou Reed

28.

Chicago

29.

James Brown

30.

Santana

31.

Bob Dylan

32.

Blood, Sweat & Tears

33.

Janis Joplin

34.

Leonard Cohen

35.

Brian Poole & the Tremeloes / The Tornados

36.

John McLaughlin

37.

The Who

38.

The Velvet Underground

39.

Lulu / Tommy Steele

40.

Cat Stevens

41.

The Righteous Brothers

42.

The Hollies

43.

Roger Daltrey

44.

Elton John

45.

Them

46.

The Moody Blues

47.

The Kinks

48.

Roy Orbison

49.

Savoy Brown

50.

Ten Years After

51.

Ted Nugent & the Amboy Dukes

52.

Status Quo

53.

Slade

54.

Chick Corea

55.

Rainbow

56.

Fairport Convention

57.

Cream

58.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive

59.

Graham Parker

60.

The Walker Brothers

61.

Kansas

62.

Boston

63.

Jeff Beck

64.

Little Richard

65.

Melanie

66.

Jethro Tull

67.

Donovan

68.

Mahavishnu Orchestra

69.

The Three Degrees

70.

Labelle

71.

The O'Jays

72.

Poco

73.

Dave Mason

74.

The Byrds

75.

Billy Paul

76.

Argent

77.

Pacific Gas & Electric

78.

REO Speedwagon

79.

Aerosmith

80.

Johnny Winter

81.

Janis Ian

82.

Journey

83.

The Jacksons

84.

Bob James

85.

Fleetwood Mac

86.

Al Stewart

87.

Chicory Tip

88.

Gilbert O'Sullivan

89.

Johnny Nash

90.

The Clash

91.

Robin Trower

92.

The Everly Brothers

93.

The Beach Boys

94.

Los Teen Tops

95.

Bruce Springsteen

96.

Dan Fogelberg

97.

Rick Derringer

98.

Aphrodite's Child

99.

10cc

100.

Miguel Ríos

And I don't even think that Poco is part of the joke. We might have been guessing that the country rock thing wasn't going to age well by 1983 or so, but keep in mind Poco was once actually called a supergroup.

No, it's more the inclusions of Johnny Nash and Gilbert O'Sullivan that get me. Yeah, they got Dylan and The Beatles and The Kinks and The Stones, but looks like they left out Neil Young so they could find room for The Righteous Brothers. They skipped Yes to make sure Aphrodite's Child could fit.

And for some reason they gave Roger Daltrey a record after having already given one to The Who? What was it, the McVicar soundtrack?

Anyway, it's the juxtaposition, and who's put in at the expense of who else that's funny. Pussy Galore played that up big time on the back of their album, and I had some fun with it on one of my homemade CDs a few years back, as well. I'll publish both those 100-item lists soon.

*But not always. The David Bowie album is a reissue of Another Face; the Amboy Dukes record is a repackaged Survival of the Fittest - Live. I think the REO Speedwagon LP is actually Hi Infidelity. (Return)

R: This is great stuff, & I see your point about the humor. Dave Dee, Dozy, etc. hadda few hits in England, but.... & who or what is a Chicory Tip? & Los Teen Tops? Whateva.... The cheap costs 4 the albums almost outweighed the sometimes rather odd song selections.The 1 of these albums I remember looking at real closely mangled Fairport Convention's song titles pretty badly, & only pictured 3 of the band members on the cover -- & I couldn't tell ya which 3 they were, but Sandy Denny sure wasn't 1 of 'em.Didja ever see any of Italy's "Storia E Musica" best-of series on cassettes? I stumbled over a bunch of them at a Target store in San Antonio about 25 years ago -- lotsa great stuff real cheap: Dylan, Byrds, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Soft Machine, Strawbs, Poco, etc. Zero credits or liner notes, but nicely done for the price. I feel about them the same way you feel about La Historia. (& how does Poco keep getting in there?) This series was the 1st place I heard Dylan's "One of Us Must Know," Strawbs' "Where is This Dream of Your Youth?," etc.Nice historical work here, thanx! -- TAD.

Hey, Los Teen Tops' translated Wiki page is hilarious ... and highly informative, of course. Obviously they were a big pretty deal in Latin American countries and even Europe long before anybody even knew what a Beatles was, bet you!

Answers? Questions!Questions? Answers!

Feed Me With Your Feed

The La Historia Family

Sr. (R.I.P.) and Jr. (R.I.P.) and III (R.I.P.)

History Lesson -- Part II

This blog is named after my last three iPods, all of which have been well-loved despite their spotty service records. Historia Sr. was a Gen 1 Shuffle with a gigabyte of flash memory and was probably purchased in early 2005. Jr., a 1 GB Gen 2 Shuffle with the (Product) coloring that they told me would cure hunger in Africa or whatever, was purchased upon the final heat death of Sr., sometime during the long hot summer of 2007. Jr. finally passed on in Mid-August of 2010. My current unit, called III of course, is one of the only-briefly-available Gen 3s, with the controls on the headphones. It proved so popular with the masses that Apple was forced to rush in with the Gen 4 after only a few months, but I like mine just fine.
All three units, of course, were named after the seminal Pussy Galore album of 1990, which itself was named after and spoofed the long-running series of Spanish record albums, the ones you always used to find in the cutout bins, if you're old enough to know what those were.

Rastronomicals - What Does It Mean?

I'm in my 40's and live and work in South Florida.
Since 2000 or so I have kept a website about my extensive Houston Astro baseball card collection at http://www.astroland.net.
Back in '05, I founded The Crawfish Boxes, which became under my direction the web's leading blog about the Houston Astros baseball club.
Disgusted at the workload-to-pay ratio, and by the arrogance of sabermetricians, and close to devastated by the Mitchell report and its implications about the complicity of Houston Astros management, I left TCB at the beginning of 2008, promising my readers there that I would be starting a music blog.
This, finally, is that blog.

Last Child

Cool PHP script that displays my last 10 scrobbled tracks at Last.FM goes here, but your browser does not support Iframes.

Culture Vultures

But What Does Hipster Kitty Think?

Our Arbiter of Coolness here at La Historia de la Musica Rock, Hipster Kitty, would be here pontificating upon the last scrobbled track above, but evidently your browser isn't cool enought to support an iframe

TVC15

Cool PHP script that displays my top 15 scrobbled tracks at Last.FM over the last six months goes here, but your browser does not support Iframes.